Reasonable radical's slate wiped clean 40 years after race riots

She was the daughter of a small-business owner in Memphis, a serious student who lived in a sorority house and attended football games and went out on plenty of dates.

The only thing radical about her was her reasonableness - which in 1962, while editor of the campus newspaper at the University of Mississippi, was radical enough.

When Sidna Brower Mitchell published an editorial 40 years ago in the Daily Mississippian calling for an end to the riot that accompanied the admission of James Meredith, the college's first black student, the student senate censured her for what they saw as disloyalty to the Southern cause. That cause: segregation.

"This is an appeal to the entire student body .... I beg you to return to your homes," her editorial read the morning after two people were killed and 300 wounded on campus surrounded by several hundred federal marshals and 30,000 troops who had descended on "Ole Miss" to ensure Meredith's safety.

"Whatever your beliefs, you are a citizen of the United States and of the State of Mississippi, and should preserve the peace and harmony of both governments," Ms Mitchell wrote.");document.write("

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"Basically, all I said was, 'Don't riot, boys. Obey the law'," said Ms Mitchell, 61, back on campus this week for the university's year-long examination of its past and celebration of its progress.

Ms Mitchell was due to have that censure officially lifted yesterday a small part of a reconciliation that's being constructed bit by bit. The current student senate unanimously adopted a resolution that commends her for "the outstanding courage she displayed throughout her tenure as editor of the Daily Mississippian".

"I thought it would be a great gesture to correct the sins of our forefathers," said Will Barwell, a student government cabinet member who co-authored the resolution. "We're not proud of what happened. We acknowledge it and we're sorry for it and we want to do what we can to make up for it."

Mr Meredith's appearance put the school in the eye of the racial storm, and Ms Mitchell's writing gained symbolic weight, drawing especially vicious local scorn. The Governor and legislators railed against her. She and other newspaper staff members received death threats, and one underground publication pronounced her "the Pink Princess" and tried to have her ousted.

Her writing gained her national attention too - she was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Ms Mitchell went on to work in journalism in New York and London before marrying and moving to New Jersey, where she and her husband are retired after selling a chain of weekly newspapers there.

A story in Monday's edition of the Daily Mississippian said that last year, 13 per cent of the school's 12,300 students were African Americans. Two of the past three student body presidents have been black.

"I'm thrilled," Ms Mitchell said of the resolution. "It's wiping the slate clean, and it shows we've got some smart people around here."